Quote:
Originally Posted by Little.Egret
BookSumo Press, free (all published last month)
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Easy Okra Cookbook: Re-Imagine Okra with 50 Delicious Okra Recipes
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There is only
one way to cook okra, by itself (e.g., not in a dish combined with other things like tomatoes).
First, here's how you
don't cook it. You don't boil it, or otherwise do anything to make it slimy. Gross!
The right way to cook okra is to slice it up (you can buy it frozen pre-sliced, at least in the Deep South, and it works out okay). Bread it lightly with corn meal and maybe a little bit of corn flour. You put it in a hot skillet, stir (and maybe flip the pieces) often, and cook it until it's almost burned. Delicious. There is a knack to it, and I haven't mastered it. Sometimes it's okay, most of the time it is not. My 81-year-old mother has it down--it turns out perfect every time. But she's probably been doing it since she was tall enough to see the top of the range.
There's a chain of restaurants in this area which that makes delicious fried okra, but I am all but certain that it is not pan-fried. Somehow they have figured out a way to deep fry it and have it turn out almost as good as the pan-fried okra. One of these days, I'm going to bribe the fry person to tell me how it's done.
Whatever you do, don't make a breading, dip the okra in, and deep fry it. I would rather not eat it at all.
Oh, make sure that you pick out young okra, if you buy it from the produce market or produce department in a grocery store. When the okra has grown too large, it gets fibrous and is unpleasant to eat because of that.